“In the Third Circle. A three-headed dog. You’re not leaving? You have to see the boiling river of blood.”
How could Jared sleep after that? In bed, every time Nicola closed her eyes, she saw that murky underground place, its sunless sky. She saw swarming flies and dueling monsters. The boiling river of blood, she imagined.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she dragged her duvet to where there was someone who would keep her safe and warm. Someone small and black and white.
Much later, the kitchen light flicked on.
“Nicola?” Terence said.
Nicola sat up blinking. The tears came right away. “I can’t sleep!”
Terence, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, got down on the kitchen floor. He pulled Nicola’s duvet over his bare legs. June Bug wriggled between them and sighed.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked.
“Jared showed me Inferno 2! It was horrible! Is there such a place as hell?”
“Yes,” Terence said, and Nicola collapsed into him and sobbed.
“But it’s not like that game. That game is a metaphor.”
“What’s that?”
“A way of explaining something to make it easier to understand. What happened in the game?”
“An angel fell from heaven and landed in hell. Jared said that was where the violent people went. Then the horriblest monster appeared with a horrible ax thing. And I didn’t even wait to see the boiling river of blood.”
“You see? In the game, violence punishes violent people. In real life, violent people are tormented by their violent thoughts. And if they’re not too terrible, if they actually feel bad about the things they think and do, they’re tormented by their conscience.”
“They feel guilty.”
“Yes. There’s no actual place called hell. It’s here.” He tapped her head. “Does that make sense?”
“Sort of.” Nicola sniffed.
“Is there any gingerbread left?”
“No.”
“So there’s another hell,” Terence said, smiling.
“There’s more than one?”
“There are many. Mine, at this particular moment, is waking up in the middle of the night with a powerful yearning for my daughter’s gingerbread, only to discover there isn’t any left. I guess I’ll have cereal. Do you want some?”
Nicola said no. “I’m going back to bed. Thanks, Dad.”
She kissed him goodnight. And she kissed her little dog, who had slept right through this Comforting Talk about What Hell Really Is.
17
—
At school the next day, Margot Tamm tripped Nicola so she nearly fell on her face in the wide aisle that separated the two sides of the classroom. This happened when Nicola was returning to her desk after asking Lindsay if she’d visited Shady Oaks the day before. Lindsay had pushed up her pink glasses and made a shooing motion with her hand. Either she didn’t want to talk just then, or she never wanted to speak to Nicola again.
Nicola laid her forehead on the cool top of her desk. She was the one who had announced in front of the whole class that she didn’t want to sit with Lindsay. Why? Lindsay wasn’t so bad. Even though she wore pink glasses and was always talking about brides, she wasn’t really a clothes-and-hair girl. So why had Nicola been mean to her in front of everyone?
The bad way she had treated Lindsay was becoming a feeling, a monstrous feeling. A feeling with horns.
Nicola lifted her head off the desk and narrowed her eyes at Margo Tamm one seat ahead, all gussied up with hair thingies. With her finger and thumb Nicola flicked Margo’s shoulder as hard as she could. When Margo squealed and swung around, Nicola hissed, “Do you think I care how you feel?”
Ms. Phibbs acted like she didn’t see. These little skirmishes were always breaking out on the left side of the room right under her nose. But now Gavin Heinrichs swaggered to the front to give his presentation on sasquatches.
A sasquatch was hairy. It had a weightlifter’s body. All it was missing were the horns. Nicola folded over her desk and waited for Gavin to finish. Then everyone had to clap and ask a question. Even Nicola, who had plugged her ears for the whole presentation.
“But are there really sasquatches?” she asked.
“Yes!” Gavin said. “You saw the picture.”
“It was all blurry. It could have been a bear or a man in a costume or — ”
“Next question?” Ms. Phibbs said.
* * *
When she got home, Nicola phoned Lindsay.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry for saying that I didn’t want to sit beside you.”
“Why did you say it?” Lindsay asked. “Did you only want to be my friend for the holidays?”
“No. School’s just so awful now. Everyone’s so mean. I said a mean thing without really thinking about it. Last night, I could hardly sleep.”
Only then did Nicola’s monstrous feeling lumber back to the dark place it lived.
Lindsay sniffed on her end of the line.
“Did you go to Shady Oaks?” Nicola asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m wondering what happened.”
“So you weren’t only going for June Bug?” Lindsay asked.
“I was at the beginning. Now I’m worried about them.”
Finally, she sounded like the old bubbly Lindsay. “I knew it! I knew you cared!”
“Is Mr. Milton taking the pills?”
“No. He was wide awake and walking around. But he’s still talking about entertaining strangers. I think Jorie’s wrong, though.”
“About what?” Nicola asked.
“I have to hang up in a second. I’m going to the library with Ignacio.”
“What’s Jorie wrong about?”
“I don’t think Mr. Milton is saying the same thing over and over because he had a stroke. He brought me to Mr. Fitzpatrick’s door and said, ‘Do not forget.’ And he did the same at Mrs. Michaels’ door. And Mrs. Tanaka’s. Their doors are locked. I don’t like that. It’s like a prison. And, Nicola?”
“What?”
“Outside each door, he pointed to his eye. I think he saw something. He’s trying to tell us about it. Remember what he said the first time we came?”
“He asked if we were strangers.”
“And he said to get them out. Ignacio’s here. I have to go now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
18
—
For her wildlife presentation, Lindsay dressed up in a ruffled white top. Nicola could almost see rays of excitement beaming off her. She looked like a person who had just won the lottery. A person who knew some important secret she was bursting to tell.
Her title page came up on the screen: Angels. The picture was vaguely familiar to Nicola. A stained-glass angel holding a scroll.
The golden-haired angel from the window at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.
“Huh?” someone said. Probably Gavin Heinrichs or Margo Tamm.
Appearance, Food, Habitat, Life Cycle and Communication were the categories Ms. Phibbs had assigned.
Lindsay flipped quickly through a series of slides. Snow angels. Cupids from valentine cards. A statue on a gravestone. But most of the pictures were paintings and sculptures showing angels. Babies and adults, male and female. Some were dressed colorfully, with gold pointed hats. Others were all in white. One held a dove, another a sword. Some had halos, but each halo was different — a sort of plate stuck to the back of the head, or spiky rays, or an aura of light.
“So, Appearance,” Lindsay said. “I just showed you so many different ways angels might appear, but the truth is that they don’t actually have bodies.”
“Huh?” Again.
“They take on other forms, like human or animal. Something we’ll recognize
. So how can you tell a person from an angel? Because they give off a sweet perfume. But people might wear perfume and aftershave, right? So how do you tell? Because they glow!”
Lindsay clicked on another slide. A gold X-ray of an angel, an angel made entirely of light.
Some kids were whispering to each other. From the left side of the room, scoffing laughter.
“Okay, Food,” Lindsay said. “This is easy!”
There was one sentence on the screen: They don’t eat!
“For Habitat, angels can live anywhere. They’re found all over the world, in every culture. But they prefer to be near people. Because they exist to help people.”
She clicked through a series of pictures that showed a country on a map, a photograph of the place, then an angel. Thailand. India. Canada. Italy. Russia.
As the whispers grew louder, Lindsay sped up. “Life Cycle. Easy again! They don’t die!” she read. “Communication. This is so amazing.”
They sing instead of speak.
From the left side of the room, Margo Tamm screeched like an opera singer.
Lindsay reddened, adding, “To communicate with humans, they leave signs that most of the time we don’t even notice. Because we’re not looking for them.”
She scrunched her nose so her glasses lifted, as though she was wondering whether to say the next thing.
“But the thing I like best about angels is that in so many of the pictures they look like they’re wearing wedding dresses.”
Her last slide showed a Christmas card angel in a long white gown.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a bow.
Ms. Phibbs, sitting at her desk, squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Lindsay? The assignment was about animals. You told me you were presenting on squirrels.”
“I was going to. I love squirrels! But yesterday I got these really interesting books on angels for a friend. I stayed up until eleven o’clock redoing everything.”
“But angels aren’t animals, are they?” Ms. Phibbs said. “They’re not even real.”
“Gavin did sasquatches.”
“Sasquatches are real!” Gavin Heinrichs bellowed.
Ms. Phibbs’ lips tightened and she crossed her arms. Nicola could see the lumpy place in the sleeve of her cardigan where she tucked her tissues. “Questions?”
Nicola put up her hand. “What kind of signs do they leave?”
“It could be like a word in a crossword puzzle.”
Inside Nicola a funny feeling started up. A fluttery, butterflies-in-the-tummy feeling.
“Do you have a source for that?” Ms. Phibbs asked Lindsay, because they were supposed to list where they found their facts.
“I used the Internet. And the two library books I took out for my friend.”
“Have you ever seen an angel?” asked Aleisha Durmaz, who sat on Lindsay’s side of the room.
“I think so,” Lindsay said. “I might have seen three of them. Maybe more. I wasn’t looking before. I didn’t know to look. You might have seen one, too. They’re really common, actually.”
“Lindsay, I’m going to stop you here,” Ms. Phibbs said. “We don’t discuss religion at school out of respect for other faiths.”
“But all religions have angels, Ms. Phibbs,” Lindsay said. “Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews. I showed you some of them.”
“This is getting silly. You may sit down.”
Lindsay shuffled back to her desk with everyone staring at her instead of applauding like Ms. Phibbs had made them do for the other presenters. After a few minutes of not opening her math book, she raised her hand and asked to go to the bathroom. Ms. Phibbs said she could.
Lindsay was gone a long time. Eventually, Nicola put up her hand and asked to go, too. Ms. Phibbs seemed to have forgotten about Lindsay because she gave Nicola permission even though this year’s rule was that only one person could leave the room at a time.
Nicola looked for Lindsay in the bathrooms on all three floors of Queen Elizabeth Elementary, but didn’t find her.
* * *
When school was over, Nicola walked to the Sheldon Arms Apartments. Lindsay buzzed her in. Nicola climbed the stairs and found the apartment door open. She shed her boots and coat and went straight to Lindsay’s room, where two blue socks jutted from the Feel Better Box.
“Why did you leave school?” Nicola asked.
“Ms. Phibbs said my report wasn’t respectful, but she was the disrespectful one. It made me mad. I’m okay now, though. Come in.”
Nicola crawled into the box where the cologne smell was thick. She lay down next to Lindsay so they were squashed together.
“What did you mean about the crossword puzzle?”
Lindsay said, “Couldn’t it be a sign?”
“It was just a coincidence.”
“But remember that flowery smell at Shady Oaks? The good smell around Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Michaels and Mrs. Tanaka? A sweet perfume is a sign that an angel is nearby. I have a source for that. Do you want to see the books?”
Nicola felt that fluttering again. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was looking right at a picture of Irene taped above her head.
“That’s your mom,” she said.
Irene in a wedding dress. The picture was cut in half.
“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Lindsay asked. “Doesn’t she look happy?”
“Where’s the other half of the picture?”
“They got divorced. Do you want to see the dress?” Lindsay asked.
Anything to get out of the box.
In the hall, Lindsay opened a cupboard and climbed the shelves of sheets and towels. She pulled down a white garbage bag and lifted out the dress.
“It’s really pretty,” Nicola said. And it was. The sleeves were puffed at the shoulders, the bodice stiff with tiny pearls.
“Can you think of anything else you only wear once? That’s why a wedding dress is so special. Because you only wear it once and no matter what happens after that, you’re always happy the day you wear it.” Lindsay rolled up the dress and stuffed it back in the bag.
Nicola asked, “Is your mom unhappy?”
“She was. Mostly she’s stressed now.”
They returned to Lindsay’s room. Nicola hesitated in the doorway.
“We don’t have to go back in the box,” Lindsay said. “I already feel better. I feel better because you came over.”
“Lindsay,” Nicola said. “You don’t really think there are angels at Shady Oaks.”
“That’s what Mr. Milton thinks. That’s what he was trying to tell me. And when June Bug put on her show? I felt like something really special happened and it wasn’t June Bug doing her tricks.”
“I felt it, too,” Nicola said.
“It was because they were there. Mrs. Michaels and Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Tanaka.”
19
—
First they stopped at Feeler’s Flowers, around the corner from the apartment in a strip mall between a Chinese restaurant and a dollar store. A flower shop was a much nicer place to work than a lawyer’s office or the computing center at the college where Nicola’s father spent every day. Nicola told Irene this.
“You’re right,” Irene said as she unpacked a box of greeting cards. “It would be heavenly, if only I sold some flowers.” She looked closely at Lindsay. “Feeling better, Ms. Feeler?”
Lindsay nodded. “We’re going to walk June Bug.”
“You know it’s already four? It’ll be dark in an hour.”
“I’ll be back by then,” Lindsay said, with a hug for Irene.
As soon as they left the shop, Nicola told Lindsay, “It smells good in there. It smells sweet. So is an angel nearby?”
“Maybe,” Lindsay said. “Or maybe it’s just the flowers. We don’t know,
right?”
“Every single flower shop can’t have angels in it,” Nicola said.
“Why not?”
“There are flower shops everywhere. Flowers are everywhere.”
“Angels are everywhere.”
Nicola sighed.
They picked up June Bug, then set out again. Not to visit Shady Oaks, but to see if Lindsay was right. If the doors to Mrs. Michaels’, Mr. Fitzpatrick’s and Mrs. Tanaka’s rooms were locked, Lindsay and Nicola would have to look in at them from the outside.
“I hope the curtains aren’t closed,” Nicola said.
“There aren’t any. At least, there weren’t in Mr. Milton’s room.”
“No smiling. No laughing. No curtains,” Nicola said.
Two blocks from Shady Oaks the little dog figured out where they were going and began pulling so hard on the leash that Nicola had to carry her.
“We haven’t visited for a few days. She really wants to go back.”
When they reached Shady Oaks, they saw the fence.Next door was a house. These Shady Oaks neighbors had young children. Nicola spotted the roof of a plastic playhouse protruding from a snowy hump, right next to the fence.
Nicola climbed up first and looked over into the yard of Shady Oaks. A tamped-down path led from the back gate to the back door, probably made by the people who delivered the food. Slanted icicles hung from the eaves and over the high windows, as thick as bars.
Lindsay passed June Bug up to Nicola and the two of them jumped down into the untouched snow on the Shady Oaks side. Lindsay went next. She waded to the corner of the building where the garbage and recycling bins stood and dragged one back. Clambering up on it, she broke off an icicle and used it to knock the others down.
Now she was just tall enough to see in the window. One peek and she jumped to the ground, making a face.
“What?” Nicola asked.
Lindsay pointed to the window.
Nicola climbed up on the bin and looked in herself. She saw a room eerily lit from the blue glow of a computer screen. Then she noticed another light across the room.
A cigarette.
A man was stretched out on a sofa, one arm bent to form a pillow behind his head. The man Nicola had seen the first day she came to Shady Oaks. He was smoking, flicking the ash into an ashtray balanced on his chest. When he lifted the cigarette to his mouth and sucked on it, the end flared red and reflected in his glasses lenses.
A Simple Case of Angels Page 8